Pottery in the Community Garden

by runningwaterpottery3533

Today we started planting tomatoes in Wayland Baptist University’s Community Garden. The tomatoes are in a raised lasagna bed with a 2″x4″ welded wire cage around them. Inside the cage is an item called a ‘Water Wall’ which is a series of vertical tubes that are filled with water. This will insulate the tender plants when the night time temperatures are still a little cool. In between the tomato cages are several ‘Ollas’ which are unglazed clay pots that I made on the potter’s wheel. They are fired, in a kiln, at a low temperature and this keeps the clay porous so water can slowly seep through and irrigate the plants without the moisture sinking down below the root zone. It’s a subsurface drip irrigation system!